Country Feedback

June 16, 2008

A lot of the time, when we think back on traumatic events, our memory holds on to the odd, seemingly trivial fragments. “Country Feedback” is partially comprised of these sort of random, evocative images; some of them come across like flashes of painful memories, the rest are the bits of scenery you may get a fix on when you can’t bear to look someone in the eye. On the printed page, they seem like non-sequiturs, but in song, they resonate, and not simply because they are stunning bits of language. (I’m particularly fond of “a paper weight, a junk garage, a winter rain, a honey pot.”) We can intuit the personal meaning, and project what we need on to these bits to make the song our own.

The remainder of the song’s lyrics are disarmingly straight-forward. Out Of Time is an album of love songs, and “Country Feedback” is love’s bitter end. Blame is passed back and forth, guilt and confusion do the singer’s head in, and he’s left battered and broken, simultaneously lamenting a million mistakes and clinging to the past. He says that he needs the relationship, but it’s plain as day: What he wants and what he needs has been confused.

The arrangement for “Country Feedback” is more or less exactly what the title suggests: It’s a country dirge paired with a mournful electric guitar part by Peter Buck that recalls Neil Young at his most despondent. In live performance, Buck’s solo at the conclusion is extended significantly, drawing out the pain until it fades into resignation. Otherwise, the music is rather static, leaving Michael Stipe to provide the key dynamic shifts.

A goofy note:

Matthew Perpetua: I’m doing a big one today — “Country Feedback”

marathonpacks: Whoa

Matthew Perpetua: Or wait…
is it “Country Feedbag”?

marathonpacks: I think it’s “Country Feedbag”

Matthew Perpetua: I am pretty sure that Michael Stipe wrote it about the closing of a beloved all-you-can-eat country buffet
“it’s crazy what you could’ve had — ribs, chicken, greens!”

Unbelievable live! Peter’s guitar at the end just tugs at your heart – you can feel his pain. And on Roadmovie where Michael has his back to the audience and just sits there shaking his head. If you weren’t feeling depressed before, you will now. Infact, live or not, this song always makes me feel like that.

When I first read that this was a love-gone-wrong song I was devistated. I always took it about addiction. Looking back on to what your life was, what it is now, and what it’ll never be. Give up your addiction now and you can make things better, but your whole life now revolves around this one thing and you’re too scared to try to go on without it.

The live version is pretty good, but the guitar solo is a little weak. (gasp! Oh no he didn’t!)

This is just a fantastic song. There isn’t anything to the bones of the song. Straight forward chord progression. What makes it is entirely Bill’s bluesy guitar and Michael Stipe’s “It’s crazy what you could of had, I need this” repeated at his emotive best. Like many of my favorite songs, this was not the one that jumped out first on the album, but I remember one day just latching on to it.

Perhaps the first REM song I ever learned to sing and play. Love those easy chords.

Best Lyric:
This flower is scorched, this film is on
it’s on a maddening loop, these clothes
these clothes don’t fit us right,

Second Best:
It’s crazy what you could of had,
crazy what you could of had,
I need this. I. Need. This.

This one just came across my R.E.M. shuffle in iTunes. I never paid that much attention to that song until the band started paying all that much attention to it during the Monster tour. Then I realized that it really was one of their all-time highlights and became one of my favorites. Peter’s solo in the live version I think makes that the definitive version, but you can’t deny the urgent, immediate emotion of the single-take lyrics on the record.

you all probably know that in the In Time notes PB talks about how when the band did the online thing for people to request songs for upcoming concerts (I think it was a European Tour), this song always had the most requests by apparently a very wide margin ; and he seems kinda befuddled by that

When the band played two nights at Dublin’s Marley Park back in 2003 I was there for both. Some friends thought I was crazy/obsessive, but when they played this in the encore for the second night with Peter’s extneded guitar solo I knew it was worth every penny. Thank you…

This is in my top 5 of favorite REM songs. The best song off OUT OF TIME in my opinion. I too, have always thought this had a real Neil Young feel to it. Very mournful. I love to play this song on guitar. Simple chord progression, but that minor chord just stabs you right in the heart.

Thanks for the write-up, Matthew. This is a beautiful song, and probably the only one in the REM canon that I actually prefer live.

I was very surprised when I turned a friend on to REM by compiling some songs on a CD for him, and he immediately fell in love with this one. As great as it is, I think we’ve all agreed that it’s not a “grabber”.

A top 10 REM song, definitely. While I love the gravelly takes from the Monster tour, in terms of the definitve live performance I think it’s the one that was recorded for BBC 2 on the Jools Holland special promoting UP. It was acoustic-y with someone playing a lap slide guitar (what’s the real name for that again?). It was also a B-side to an UP single, if I recall. 6 and a half minutes of pure bliss.

As for Peter’s guitar solos I’d prefer he kept them in the studio – he is not a live shredder. I think if noodling on Country Feedback works it’s because the loop of chords are all in the key of G and it’s extremely easy to pick out a riff to. I basically learned guitar to this song. The same 7 chord progression repeated – Em, G, D, C, G, D, Cmaj7, Cmaj7 (that last one is crucial!) are a stunning accomplishment of doing so much with so little. I see Peter Buck as “Mr Chords” and this song would be my prime example. Didn’t I read Peter recorded this as a demo (hence his counting in), the band added layers, Michael came in last and sang his new lyrics and they left it at that? – re-cutting the whole thing would have lost that rough, edgy, feedback-y feel which is integral to the song.

Lyrics are awesome too. Some truly memorable lines. Perhaps this song caught the imagination on the Monster tour because those lyrics fit so nicely with Monster’s themes of obsession, blame and meltdown. A “country” cousin of Star Me Kitten thematically too.

You come to me with excuses
Decked out out in a robe (but, I always thought it was “row”).

Somebody mentioned Fascinating. It’s here:
Not bad but does reek a bit of Reveal off-cut status.

(Fascinating was (or shoulda been) the best song on Reveal IMHO…I can like e-mail you a copy if you decide you need one Matthew. Also, are you gonna do “Wall of Death” or “Draggin’ the Line”?)

Whenever my one friend or I get in a nasty life changing fight with either our respective parents or lover, and then proceeds hangs out with the other in our duo, it is commonplace to ask the other “So I gather it got Country Feedback in there?”

MP standard for talking about a non-album track usually has to do with “Did they play it live regularly.” Beyond that, I don’t know why Dark Globe appears, and say, “Witchita Lineman” or “Academy Fight Song” don’t (at least yet). Plus, by what he’s said, and my guesstimate, we’ve got the 7 remaining album track post, and maybe 1 non-album track left.

Although, damn it, I do love me some “First We Take Manhattan,” or “Wall of Death” or “Sponge”.

“crazy what you could have had” the ultimate statement of regret summed up in six small words? Funny how I internalize that statement…its crazy what you (I) could have had, instead of a cocky way of saying, crazy what you could have had.

There is one non-album song I’m doing by request, mainly because I love it, and it’s totally worthy of consideration. “Witchita Lineman,” I suppose I should do that one, but I probably won’t. They did so many covers back in the old days, I just can’t keep up with them all. It dilutes the project to have too many non-essential covers, and it’s boring for me to write those entries because I have to write about the songs in the context of R.E.M., which in many cases is the least interesting way to approach them.

MP — thanks for helping me to figure out why I always felt just so-so about this song — it was the Neil Young reference. I just can’t stand that guy’s music — I really don’t know what people see in him — the sound, the lyrics, the voice, are all poor in my opinion.

I’m not sure by what standard the guitar solo can be called “weak.” We all know Buck ain’t exactly Hendrix — nor would we want him to be. The fact that he does so few solos makes this one even more special when he pulls it out in concert. It’s not about technical virtuosity — it’s about the feeling he evokes.

Technical Virtuosity and the emotion one plays with are not mutually exclusive things. You can have both. Bucks is techinally weak. The way he emotes it is really good. End result, the solo is a little weak.

Of course technical skill and intuitive feeling aren’t mutually exclusive. But the latter is more important than the former, at least when it comes to R.E.M. The fact that Buck is no guitar virtuoso doesn’t detract from R.E.M.’s greatness, or this song’s greatness, in the slightest.

It’s an interesting debate, and I don’t claim any knowledge of the guitar whatsoever; I just know that’s a friggin’ beautiful solo.

Powderfinger: Solo,
Lyrics,
“Shelter me from the powder
and the finger
Cover me with the thought
that pulled the trigger
Think of me
as one you’d never figured
Would fade away so young
With so much left undone
Remember me to my love,
I know I’ll miss her.”

Brilliant.

Neil’s voice may not exactly be operatic, but at least we do not have to worry about him losing it like some of his peers have.

“Country Feedback” is so raw that you have to admire it. Other songs from Out of Time (such as “Losing My Religion” and “Half a World Away” are finely crafted, which is why they are gems). The power of this song is in it’s, as Matthew mentions, “evocative images” and non-sequiturs that somehow ring true, really true: a checklist of a lost lover’s minutia/detritus. The music drones like a mourning dirge, but cathartic and penitent with maturity and newfound clarity.

See, I think Buck is a fantastic guitar player. He plays some fantastic riffs and stuff that other good players would have problems with. (The Riff for Wolves, Lower comes to mind). Just not a soloist in the traditional sense.

If the REMDublin site is still up and running Scott, you can hear a small snippet of the song there (1st verse and chorus). It was one of my favourites from the Olympia shows. I really hope it emerges somewhere at some point.

I used to have a bootleg of a show at Hershey Stadium late on the Monster Tour on which Michael sung the “aluminum tastes like fear, adrenaline pulls me near” lines from “E-bow The Letter” over Peter’s not-yet-as-developed-as-later solo. I think that addition worked a lot better than the later “Chorus and the Ring” prologue.

I am one of the many people who misheard “fuck all” for “fuck off”. I still sing “fuck off” – I like the way it adds a little anger to the song, instead of just more dispair. And when you feel that bad, you tend to want to be left alone, so it also fits that way.

This flower is scorched, this film is on, on a maddening loop. These clothes don’t fit us right, and I’m to blame. It’s all the same. It’s all the same.

Far and away my favorite R.E.M. song, although one I sorta had to grow into. (When I bought Out of Time in ’89, I just hadn’t yet felt the heartbreaks to do the song justice.)

The live version with Neil Young is floating around the ether, and it’s pretty solid. I also enjoy the Unplugged 2001 version, which ends with Michael riffing on the more withering lines in “Like a Rolling Stone.” You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

I love this song. I don’t think it is as good as Losing My Religion, which gets slighted I think because of so much airplay – overexposure, but easily the second best song from Out Of Time and a dark and painful song (which tend to be the kind I like best). For me this song is sort of the bridge between Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, as it is very pastoral feeling (like nearly all of Out Of Time) but its darkness of tone fits in well with Automatic. I also have often thought of this as REM’s last true “southern gothic” song it mood and lyrics. Some of the songs on Automatic could almost be described that way, but I think it is more because the mood of the album is somber in general, not so much because they perfectly fit into that classification (maybe Drive or Sweetness Follows, but again, in my mind not a perfect fit).

the lasers are in the lab
the old man is dressed in white clothes
everybody says he’s mad
no one knows the things that he knows
no one knows no one knows NO ONE KNOWS
(gotta get away gotta get away
gotta get outta here)
I’m sleeping in an empty hallway
I just can’t accept the stares
I’m using too many colors
I’m all messed up and I don’t care

Hey Kirsten I hear ‘fuck OFF’ too . – This one stuck out on the album when I first heard it – sound and feeling so totally unlike the rest of the songs there.
Revisited it during separation & divorce and every word described me and my state of mind. Have come out better and stronger 🙂
Much chat of Mr Buck’s guitar in this thread – yes I can see the Neil Young connection, but I also think of John Frusciante’s guitar solo on ‘I could’ve lied’ from Blood Sugar etc which came out around the same time – another fave.